In Myanmar, the Euphoria of Reform Loses Its Glow

The funeral procession for U Tun Tun, a Buddhist man who was killed on Thursday during rioting in Mandalay. A Muslim man was also killed.

Soe Than Win` / Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By THOMAS FULLER

July 4, 2014

NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar — Three years after Myanmar’s ruling generals shed their uniforms and propelled the country on an ambitious journey toward democracy, security forces are back on the streets of the former military dictatorship.

A rampage by radical Buddhists in the sprawling city of Mandalay that left two people dead this week spurred the authorities to declare a nighttime curfew, dispatch hundreds of riot police officers and erect razor wire around the Muslim neighborhoods that were attacked.

The violence raised fears that the rioting that has hit provincial towns in the past two years might now spill over into Myanmar’s most populous and important cities.

It was also yet another in a string of disappointments that have worn away at the euphoria that greeted the end of five dark decades of military rule. Among the most worrisome setbacks are the attacks in western Myanmar on an ethnic minority called the Rohingya, an apparent rollback of some press freedoms and tepid commitments by foreign investors who are crucial to building the nation’s impoverished economy.

Both critics and supporters of the government agree that changes over the past three years have made Myanmar profoundly more open and free than the cloistered, brutally repressive country that it was under military rule.

But whereas two years ago the government was tightly focused on writing a foreign investment law, releasing political prisoners and abolishing strict censorship, critics say religious politicking is both distracting leaders from reforms and poisoning some of the good will that President Thein Sein, a former general, had when he began the liberalization effort in 2011.

One of the highest-profile proposals of his administration this year is a series of divisive measures to “protect” Buddhism that have drawn outrage from interfaith groups. The proposed laws — pushed by a radical Buddhist movement blamed by many for instigating violence against Muslims — would restrict religious conversions and require women to obtain permission before marrying outside their religion.

“Liberalization is over,” said Daw Zin Mar Aung, a women’s rights activist who has received death threats for her opposition to the bills. “Why would the president submit such radical laws?”

Ms. Zin Mar Aung, who like many civic leaders in the country is a former political prisoner, accuses the government of building a new national identity on the basis of nationalism and Buddhist chauvinism rather than a multicultural democracy.

The backsliding on press freedoms has been directly related, at least in one case, to the Buddhist-Muslim violence that has led to more than 250 deaths. In that case, a correspondent for Time magazine was barred from the country after writing an article on the radical Buddhist movement.

Foreign journalists have seen the duration of their visas cut, and in February, journalists were jailed under a British colonial law, the State Secrets Act, for reporting on what they claimed was a chemical weapons facility.

David Scott Mathieson, a Myanmar expert with Human Rights Watch, said the police last month “reverted to their old intimidation tactics” when they called in journalists and editors of several publications for questioning. The reason given was concern over potential money laundering, “but more obviously it was a subtle form of pressure to curb the confidence of the Burmese media,” Mr. Mathieson said.

In an attempt to explain what many call a “pause” in reforms, Romain Caillaud, the managing director in Myanmar of Vriens & Partners, a consultancy, said he sensed more caution from the still-powerful military establishment and a belief that “it’s too early to let go of the reins.”

“We were all a bit naïve about how far things could go,” Mr. Caillaud said. “They have done a lot, and they are not that comfortable going much further right now.”

The economic changes pushed by the new government are considered a critical complement to the political freedoms that have been introduced. For decades, Myanmar’s poverty-stricken economy was largely state-controlled and disconnected from the outside world.

But the welcome mat laid out for foreign investors three years ago has failed to produce the rush of foreign companies that many anticipated, and foreign businesses are encountering high levels of corruption, a dysfunctional bureaucracy and infrastructure that remains among the most primitive in Asia

The wariness is evident at Thilawa, an area outside of the country’s largest city, Yangon, that is being developed into an industrial zone.

Riot police blocking a road in Mandalay. A nighttime curfew is now in place, and razor wire encircles some Muslim neighborhoods.

Nyein Chan Naing / European Pressphoto Agency

The blueprints call for a collection of factories, a showcase for the new Myanmar that would employ thousands of workers. But there are still more water buffalo than construction workers in the future industrial zone.

The architects of the reform process — ex-generals of the former junta — are among the critics of the slow pace of the economic transformation. “I would say our economic reforms have not reached the level we expected,” Thura Shwe Mann, the speaker of the lower house of Parliament and the chairman of the governing party, said in an interview.

A spokesman for President Thein Sein complained in a separate interview that too few investors “are coming with big money.” U Ye Htut, the spokesman, added, “The president’s concern is that economic dividends have failed to reach the grass-roots level.”

The disappointing levels of foreign investment are a blow to the governing party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, which was created by the former junta. The party was counting on job creation to help it overcome what many consider the long odds of beating the National League for Democracy, the party of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate, in landmark elections due to be called next year.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi offered a measure of legitimacy to the fledgling democracy and its reform process when she joined Parliament and cultivated warmer relations with the military.

But the honeymoon between Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and the military that jailed her for the better part of two decades now appears to be soured by the refusal of Parliament — where the military is allotted one-quarter of seats — to change a law that bars her from becoming president.

She has begun to battle to curtail the military’s political power. Last month in the provincial city of Taunggu, she told a crowd of supporters that the military is “taking rights they do not deserve.”

Despite the three years of a nominally civilian government, the military’s privileges and economic clout have remained largely intact.

“They own everything: land, companies, export licenses,” said U Win Htein, a former officer who is now an opposition member of Parliament. “You name it, they have it.”

And almost without exception, the top posts in Myanmar’s government today are held by former military officers.

“It really seems like a military government in civilian clothing,” said Sean Turnell, one of the leading experts on the Burmese economy.

Yet at a time of failed and bloodstained democratic revolutions in the Middle East, some say the military’s continued engagement in politics in Myanmar ensures a measure of stability.

“This is a top-down, managed transition,” said Richard Horsey, a former United Nations official and one of the country’s leading political analysts. “It’s part of the reason why it may be more sustainable and successful than, say, the Arab Spring.”

That reform process may be partly maintained by competition between former generals in elections.

Still, there are fears that the upcoming election might also come with negatives, possibly exacerbating religious tensions, especially if the governing party tries to harness the popularity of the radical Buddhist movement.

This bodes ill for neighborhoods like Yadanabunmi in Mandalay, where this week’s attacks took place.

U Nyi Nyi, a Muslim tea shop owner, said Muslims had very little trust in the police force, which is overwhelmingly staffed by Buddhists, after it failed to stop massacres of Muslims in Meikthila and other towns and cities over the past two years.

After the violence in his neighborhood this week, police seized sticks and swords from Muslim houses. But they did not disarm the crowd of Buddhist attackers, Mr. Nyi Nyi said.